This invention relates to the administration of multiple fluid infusions.
There are many applications for which there is a need for a device which can intravenously administer a plurality of drugs. One such application is the use of chemotherapy to treat diseases such as cancer. Another application is hyperalimentation where several nutritional solutions are intravenously administered to a patient.
Attempts at providing more advanced chemotherapy regimens involving the intravenous administration of a multiplicity of drug solutions are being inhibited by a lack of equipment to simplify such a procedure. Very often if different drug solutions are used, they are administered by using a separate catheter tube for each drug. A separate infusion pump would be used on each individual catheter tube line and the tube would deliver the fluid solution into the patient through its respective intravascular access needle. A patient must pay for each catheter set and must rent a pump for use with each catheter tube. Therefore, it is costly to use multiple catheter tubes and pumps. A further problem would be the discomfort and complications involved in applying and maintaining several vascular access sites in a single patient.
Some physicians administer chemotherapy treatments with a plurality of drug solutions by mixing the solutions together and feeding the mixture into the patient through a single catheter set and pump. If the different drug solutions are compatible, they can be mixed and delivered through a single catheter. Unfortunately, there are only a limited number of drug combinations which can be used in this manner. Many drugs cannot be mixed together prior to infusion. Some drugs react to neutralize one another. Other drugs react to form precipitates which may block the catheter tube or possibly cause an embolism in the patient.
Because of these problems, it is desirable to keep the multiple fluid solutions separated. Attention is directed to the inventors' copending patent application entitled "Method for Sequential Intravenous Infusion of Multiple Fluids", which shares the same filing date and assignee as the present application. The method described in the copending application enables the use of a single catheter tube for multiple drug infusions. In order to deliver a plurality of fluid solutions separately through a single catheter tube, a valve is generally required. The valve must be sterile to perform this application; thus a disposable valve would be preferable. There are some known valves which may be manually adjusted. For example, a rotary mixing valve, invented by Santomieri, is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,637. However, this valve provides a primary fluid which is commingled with selected secondary fluid solutions and if the valve is rotated to switch between secondary inputs, fluid flow will be interrupted.